Wireless devices for communication and other consumer applications continue to grow in popularity. Examples of common wireless devices include wireless telephones (cellular and Internet), two-way pagers, and personal digital assistants (PDAs), to name a few. While wireless devices continue to proliferate, their ability to provide consumers with robust applications is limited in part due to infrastructure, and in part due to the rather limited user interface available for many wireless devices, particularly traditional cellular telephones.
Conducting personal or business affairs via a wireless device can be particularly cumbersome. In many situations, for example, it is necessary or desirable for consumers or others to provide personal information to third parties, such as vendors or service providers, to obtain goods or services, facilitate transactions, or for other purposes. However, providing personal information to third parties can be a tedious, inconvenient and repetitious task. Each time an individual provides personal information to a new recipient, a possibility exists that errors will occur. Moreover, it is often difficult to obtain information or conduct a transaction using a wireless device. With their limited interface, wireless devices are not well suited to either providing information to a wireless device user or facilitating a transaction desired by the user. There is thus a need to provide consumers with a more robust mechanism for conducting their affairs and managing their information and/or conducting transactions using a wireless device.
Furthermore, as information technology and network technology become more prolific, people find themselves repeatedly and manually inputting or otherwise providing the same data into different computer systems. For example, consumers may find themselves having to manually input their personal and billing information via each vendor website through which they choose to complete an electronic commerce (“e-commerce”) or mobile commerce (“m-commerce”) transaction. As the number of secure websites grows, consumers also find themselves having to manage numerous usernames and passwords. Thus, there is a further need for a convenient and secure system for automating the management of consumer information.
Automated or partially automated solutions for managing information historically have largely been localized processes. Using conventional techniques, users are able to create and store data files containing personal information on their personal computers or other client devices, such as personal digital assistants (“PDAs”), pagers, mobile telephones, etc. The data elements in such data files can be shared using specialized applications for filtering data out of the data file and into another application. However, such systems typically require a permanent download of proprietary data management software that might not be compatible among different devices. In addition, the data management software and data files are often stored on only a single personal computer or computerized device. If the personal computer or other computerized device becomes lost or stolen, the user's data may no longer be accessible, and might end up in the possession of another person. If the personal computer or other computerized device crashes, the data can easily be lost.
Accordingly, there remains a need for a more secure, flexible and convenient system for storing information and a method for allowing the user to manage and distribute that information using a personal computer or other network-connected device. There further remains a need for such a system and method that provides central information storage and does not require a permanent download of proprietary software to a client device for management and distribution of the information. Additionally, there is a need for a mechanism that allows the consumer to authorize trusted third parties to access the central information storage and retrieve, insert and/or modify any necessary information on behalf of the consumer.